Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren announced Tuesday that he would not seek another term. | AP Photo
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One Boren adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 65 percent of the district’s voters currently have an unfavorable impression of Obama.

The congressman’s camp was bracing for his toughest race yet. On the day after the midterm elections, National Republican Congressional Committee Executive Director Guy Harrison held a conference call with reporters and singled out Boren as a top 2012 target. Just hours before his unexpected retirement announcement, the NRCC launched a series of robocalls in Boren’s district hammering Democrats over Medicare.

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“You would have been assured that he was going to have a well-funded opponent, perhaps the best-funded opponent he has ever faced,” said John Rowley, a Boren media consultant who counts many rural Democrats as clients.

On the left, Boren found few friends. Last year, Boren faced a primary challenge from state Sen. Jim Wilson, who hammered the Blue Dog for his opposition to the health care bill. Boren cruised to an easy victory — but not before dumping nearly $1 million into a media blitz excoriating his foe as a liberal who opposed gun rights.

Boren, however, cast his retirement as a family decision, pointing out that he had two children at home in Muskogee, Okla. — both born since his 2004 election to Congress.

“This is not an easy decision for me,” Boren said at a Tuesday press conference. “It was based on the demands of constant campaigning and, most importantly, spending too much time away from my family, which includes two very young children.”

The conservative base of Boren’s seat will make it difficult for Democrats to hold. In 2006 and 2008, the Democratic majority swelled as the party won seats in Republican-friendly areas stretching from Indiana to Alabama. But many of those areas emphatically rejected the party in the midterms.

If Democrats hope to have a viable shot at returning to the majority in 2012, Tanner said part of the road would have to run through moderate-to-conservative districts that spurned them in 2010.

“Whoever wins the majority of the 91 seats within the 50-50 [percent] voting pattern will hold the gavel,” he said.

Tanner expressed concern that the ranks of Blue Dog members could further dwindle as the redistricting process proceeds. Several remaining Blue Dogs, including Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire, North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler and Georgia Rep. John Barrow, are expected to be top targets of GOP mapmakers.

Boren’s seat doesn’t change dramatically in Oklahoma’s recently passed congressional map, and Democrats have high hopes that former Rep. Brad Carson, who indicated he intends to seek the seat, can capture it in 2012.

Carson is already acquainted with the pressures of representing a conservative district as a Democrat. Following his defeat, Carson wrote a piece in The New Republic in which he sharply criticized his national party. “While the defeat was all my own, the failure was of the party to which I swear allegiance, which uncritically embraces a modernity that so many others reject,” he wrote.

In an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday, Carson said he planned to wave the same Blue Dog flag he held during his four years in the House. But he said he wouldn’t distance himself from his party.

“You don’t embrace or distance yourself,” he said. “You just be yourself.”

Readers' Comments (70)

The dems are now really a fractuous but solid left. Their pro- union faction openly welcomes the communists for protest marches and dogma. Their greens are proponents of the policies that bring us to $5 gas. They have no room for anyone that doesn't drink the kool aid.

Actually I don't think the GOP is much different. Many of the moderate GOP members are either gone or forced to fall in line with the further right. All this whole mess is doing is making a big split for both parties and the voters are going to be the ones that have to suffer for it.

The blue dogs have only themselves to blame. They followed Pelosi off the edge. As the Dems loose more and more of them they will find the party is going to stay in the minority. The loss of Boren just makes it that much harder on the party.

Obam a is the death of the democrat party. So sad. Blue dogs gave dems a safe place. Obama has ruined it. He is so left that he has lost those center dems. There are so many retiring and seeing the writing on the wall. Obama is toast.

I live in Oklahoma. This is not a district that will fall to the Republicans. It is a Blue Dog, Will Rogers, conservative Democratic district. Brad Carson who held the seat through 2004 gave up the seat to run for the open Senate seat in 2004. His opponent, Tom Coburn won the open Senate seat easily but Brad Carson handily won the 2nd district over Coburn. Brad Carson last ran in this district in 2002 and garnered 74% of the vote in a year when President Bush had his highest approval ratings ever.

In the redistricting legislation this year, the legislature made minor modifications and shoe horned several neighborhoods with massive Hispanic population growth, according to the 2010 census, into the 2nd district. These neighberhoods were in safe surrounding Republican districts making the surrounding Republican districts even safer but gave an increasing demographic edge to the Democrats.

Brad Carson has announced that he will run in the 2nd district and recapture the seat he held with overwhelmingly majorities

Great news. This is good for our party. We need to speak in one voice and act in one accord. Go Dems. Obama 2012. Moving America forward. GOP wants to take us "back.." No turning back. No turning back.

I'm having a flashback to the 1930's. FDR won electoral landslides in 1936 and 1940 despite high unemployment rates, 16% in 1936 and 14% in 1940. Througout the 1930's the Republicans ran on a platform of cutting taxes, deregulation, cutting out of control government spending and their cardinal platform of repealing FDR's New Deal legislation of economic stimulus, the 'Social Security Act' and the 'Unemployment Benefit Act'. During the entire decade the Republicans accused FDR of being a 'radical', a 'Bolshevic', a 'Communist', and a Socialist'.

The electorate throughout the 1930's saw the US heading in the wrong direction, FDR's New Deal stimulus had not brought the US out of the Great Depression, and despite those headwinds FDR won electoral landslides in 1936 and 1940. The electorate saw what the Republican's party platform was and wanted no part of the deregulation of the Casino operaters of Wall Street who created the Great Depression or repealing Social Security an unemployment benefits.

If Obama does end the party of the KKK, the party of Jim Crow laws, the party filibustering the Civil Right's Act of 1964, the party of abortion etc, America should thank him. Although, that will be about the only benefiial thing his legacy would leave.